Sustainable Management of Sports Federations: The Indirect Effects of Perceived Service on Member’s Loyalty

Pedro Cuesta-Valiño, Pablo Gutiérrez-Rodríguez and Cristina Loranca-Valle
Additional contact information
Pedro Cuesta-Valiño: Department of Economics and Business Management, University of Alcalá, 28802 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
Pablo Gutiérrez-Rodríguez: Department of Business Administration, University of León, 24071 León, Spain
Cristina Loranca-Valle: Department of Economics and Business Management, University of Alcalá, 28802 Alcalá de Henares, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-24

Abstract: Sports federations are non-profit organizations that compete for members and resources. These organizations are obliged to cooperate on the environment, nature conservation, and sustainability together with other public bodies. Given this situation and the necessity to differentiate themselves from commercial sports providers, it is essential for sports federations to create loyalty. The objective of this article is to provide an in-depth study of the variables that explain federation members’ loyalty, which is the best tool for federations to meet their sustainable and non-profit objectives. Having made an exhaustive review of the literature on loyalty, an empirical study is made of the loyalty antecedents (service quality, satisfaction, trust, and commitment), using a questionnaire of members of all of Spain’s karate federations. This empirical study has led to a model of structural equations that gives a perfect explanation of loyalty based on the relationships between the various variables, starting with service quality and considering the other variables to be mediating variables between service quality and loyalty. Furthermore, the findings show that service quality is the best option for improving member loyalty through some of the mediators proposed.

Keywords: sport marketing; sport organization; loyalty; sustainable management; service quality; satisfaction; trust; commitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/458/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/458/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:458-:d:475485

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().